Drinking water supplied by the Kurnool Municipal Corporation is mud-coloured and sticky and five times more turbid than the permissible levels, making people think twice but have been using it in view of water scarcity.
Water released from the Gajuladinne project to cater to drinking water needs of Kurnool city passes through black cotton soil and long stretches of unlined canal, resulting in turbidity and stickiness, Kurnool Municipal Commissioner S. Ravindra Babu told The Hindu . Only 40-km stretch of the canal carrying raw water has proper lining and the remaining 30 km length has no lining, he said.
The turbidity and stickiness of the water was resulting in choking of the filter beds and taking double the time for filtering the water. However, consumption of the mud-coloured water was not hazardous to health, he asserted. Seventy two million litres per day (MLD) of water was available as against the requirement of 80 MLD for meeting the needs of Kurnool.
The Commissioner has procured tankers of poly-aluminium chloride from Kovvur for water treatment by the flocculation process.
